The Grax Domain

29 Sep 2007 Deadpool and the Evil Gnomes

I had a series of dreams last night (the joys of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed) whilst I was slipping in and out of conciousness. There was one dream that I was fortunate to write down when I awoke. It featured Marvel's well known anti-hero Deadpool.

The first part of the dream I cannot remember but it had something to do with Deadpool being trapped in a castle over a cliff trying to rescue a woman with action and stuff. Or something like that. It was the 'next episode I remember more clearly.

There was this guy that went undercover at the place where Deadpool/Wade Wilson works (Wade was not hideously scarred at like he normally is, but instead looks perfectly normal). When no one was looking the spy drilled a hole into a computer monitor so that he could put a spy camera inside it. For spying you see.

The spy was trying to find out the secret identity of someone (I think it was Deadpool's secret identity he was after) . He was obsessed with this. The spy was going through various incredibly complex mathematical equations and scrambled word. The whole thing was linked to Facebook's Friendship Wheel as week.

The spy spent many hours into the night slaving away in the dark, dingy motel room. Like a madman he worked on the numbers and letters trying to figure out the secret identity. Then within the darkness of the room he heard some scratching and scurrying of something... small... and creepy....

He looked into the darkness with a rising fear in his stomach. He hesitantly grabbed the table lamp and turned it to the darkness. What he saw made his blood freeze with terror.

David the Gnome.

Thousands of David the Gnome.

Crawling up the walls and floor like ants.

And oh they were evil.

They looked to the spy with their evil eyes and grinned through their jolly cheeks. The spy cowered in the corner. Before he could react the gnomes swarmed all over the spy with unholy speed. They were forcing their ways into his mouth, muffling his cries of pain. Before too long the spy was dead.

But the spy got up onto his feet. The spy grinned an evil, sinister grin. The spy was possessed by the David Gnomes.

The next day Deadpool/Wade Wilson came into the room and was talking to this spy, unaware that was in fact a spy (by this point the spy now looked liked a guy I know from real life work. Dreams, go figure). But for some reason Wade was now me, which kinda made him a kinda Wade/Me hybrid.

The possessed spy had planned to do the same nasty possession technique on Wade/Me. He was trying to act all normal waiting for the right time to attack. However Wade/Me knew that the spy was possessed because he can break the forth wall.

The possessed spy asked Wade/Me to sit next to him on the dirty motel bed but Wade/Me nervously yet politely declined and sat on the end of the bed. When he was faced away the possessed spy smiled with the daemonic, gnome grin. Wade/Me makes his excuses and leaves the motel room, leaving the possessed spy alone in the darkness.

Wade/Me finds himself a computer and begins to do some research on Wikipedia. He tries to learn more about the evil David Gnomes, the history of them and how to stop them.

I then woke up to the sounds of the alarm clock in real life.

26 Sep 2007 Thought of the Day #6: Not liking what you see

Could one reason why we hate our fellow man is because we see a part of ourselves that we don't like inside them?

For example, an alcoholic hates himself for drinking himself to death and becoming an asshole when drunk. So he stops drinking and is happy with himself. He then sees a stumbling drunk down the street. He instantly despises and looks down on the drunk because it reminds him of when he was just like him and he hated it. Therefore he hates him.

It makes logical sense in a unfair kind of way. Does that instantly make him a bad person for thinking such bad things?

I have moments like that sometimes. I see a certain kind of person on the street and I look down upon them automatically, without thinking. It's towards fat men, people who could be thin but are heavily padded with fat. I see myself in them. I see how fat I use to be and I get disgusted with myself. I think "Why do you choose to be this way? It's simple to be thinner. It's better to be thinner. If I can do it, then anyone can do it. God I looked hideous."

I feel bad for reacting this way. I like to think I'm being helpful but at the end of the day I'm judging them by the way they look.

I know there are other people out there in the world that look down upon others because they see negative aspects of themselves. I sometimes wonder how many there are out there and what about.

19 Sep 2007 Talk Like a Pirate Day 2007

Ahoy yer landlubbers,

Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2007. Aye, I be helpin' ter keep the tradition alive!

So wot are yer waitin' fer? Get out there and be all pirate like for one day!

Savvy?

12 Sep 2007 Zombies.... Oh and a zombie cat too

It was all very.... Resident Evil-ish.

The colours were not dark bluey-black. It was more earthy colours, like brown and green.

I was with a group of people. I can't remember how many there were of us, no more than half a dozen including myself. It mostly consisted of women... actually I don't remember seeing any guys.

We were being hunted and stalked by lumbering zombies. Chased all over the place we were. Always running. I could feel the evil inside them when I looked at them, something that made them more frightening than mere zombies.

...

I remember being in my bedroom at one point in my house (even though it's not my real life house). There was a window that let the murky light shine through. Outside... I don't remember what scenery it was outside. It just felt like a bayou of some sort, willow trees and all. I was alone in the room except for a cat with me and I felt happy. I then saw a brown tabby cat outside the window wanting to be let in. Feeling a sense of "Aw look at the poor widdle kitty" I let the cat in through the window, y'know to save it from the zombies that were obviously heading this way. So I was in my bedroom with two cat, feeling quite content with myself.

Then I heard a meow in the room. A zombie meow...

There was a zombie cat somewhere in the room but I couldn't see where. The room became darker and more frightening. I could feel my heart fill with fear and I crept around the dark room, dreading the thought of being attacked by the zombie cat.

The tension in the room grew thicker and thicker. When would the zombie cat come and get me?

...

I remember being cornered by a group of zombies and one of my group friends was being eaten. One of the zombies was so close to me. I could see every detail, the exposed jaw, the rotting flesh, the evil look on his eyes. The zombie was just about to bite into my neck.

Then I woke up.

I was panting and looked around my room in a half-drowsy, panic gaze to make sure all was how it should be.

12 Sep 2007 Useful bits of code

I've been racking my brain over this ActionScript problem for days. Why is it that in ActionScript 3.0 you cannot easily set the alpha of a dynamic textfield? You can se the alpha of a movieclip or sprite, how bloody hard is it for a textfield?

Fortunately I found a link on the internet with a working solution (and no it is not "You have to embed the font, wah wah wah"), featuring filters. It's right here:

http://www.oddhammer.com/tutorials/alpha_dynamic_text/

Then it dawned on me. It took me a long while and rewording my google search to find this solution. And it was the only one. Surely there must be many people out there like me, looking for the solution but to no avail.

Plus it'll be a pain in the ass for me to find the link again.

Therefore I have a quest. No! A mini quest. I shall create a new category in the Links section called Useful bits of Code and inside it shall be an ever growing list of links that I find handy as a computer Internet programmer geek type person. Bits of code to aid me. Anyone who happens to read this is more than welcome to share my booty.

Oh, and I've added a couple more links namely in the Blog section.

5 Sep 2007 Grax Friendship Tour 2007: The Wedding

So there I was, Saturday 25th August, the big wedding day.

Not my wedding day mind, my friend Mr M's wedding day.

On this faithful day my friend Mr M was to get married to get married to the lovely Miss A. And this is actually a big deal for me because this is the first wedding I've ever been invited to. I've only ever been invited to the crappy wedding receptions, never the actual wedding. I was going to see how real people actually do weddings, like on those TV shows.

It was all pretty much how you expected it to be, a wedding at a church (they're both Christians after all, as in real life Christians), the bride was absolutely beautiful and radiant, the groom was... coordinating everything right up to the vows (which I feels a bit odd, surely the bride and groom should leave the coordinating to everyone else?), people were dressed up and looked smashing (I looked irresistible in my suit, obviously), there was music from... some local Christian pop rock playing Christian worship music...

Call me narrow minded but I can't help but feel that Christian rock being played in a church to be a bit blasphemous. What about using the traditional wind organ? Or the bagpipes? Such under-rated instruments.

Anyways.

The wedding and vows and "I do" came and went. We all proceeded to the park next door for photos where Miss A got stranded on one spot because she didn't want her dress to get ruined in the dirt. Then we got herded back into the church for dinner, toasts, etc. Because I knew virtually no one at the wedding the bride and groom dumped me on a random table where there was a rather attractive woman sitting across me. So what else could I do but be charming and socialise.

I later found out that Miss A had dumped all the single people on one table in an attempt at match making, which is the same table I was stuck on. That conniving little...

Well her plan worked.

After the dinner and toasting we got shoved out of the main hall as it was to be converted into the dance area. I was distracted by the choir who were singing some tunes with their beautiful harmonic voices. And then the hall was ready for the dance. First it was the traditional "First dance" for the bride and groom. Then it was....

.... The barn dance.

...

Well at least it wasn't a cheesy wedding disco. It didn't get me dancing though.

The night came to a close, I somehow got roped into helping clearing up the church at the end of the wedding (I could never say no to a beautiful woman), then I retired to a friend house to sleep and reflect upon what had happened that day. When I say friend I mean my newly acquired lady friend that I met across the dinner table. I left for home a few days later than I had originally planned.

5 Sep 2007 Real Life backlog

Eeesh. What a busy two weeks. Overworked, lack of fun time, two major events. It's enough to drive a guy away from his blog.

You're just dying for more details aren't you?